WRAL exposes case #8,426,974,487,092,532 of the political class abusing its power to dispense favors to the well-connected.

North Carolina’s Division of Emergency Management division has put two assistant directors on paid leave while the agency investigates reports of nepotism.

The WRAL Investigates team obtained records that show the sons and daughters of two high-ranking and four lower-level employees got unadvertised, high-paying jobs to work on disaster relief last year.

Read the whole article to learn more details about how state bureaucrats exploited a tragedy to benefit their family members. On a related note, the estimated recovery costs for Hurricane Irene to the state government is estimated to be running into the tens of millions. I have yet to see a clear explanation of where the state is going to come up with the money to pay for these funds.

I wrote last fall about how Gov. Perdue and Easley raided roughly $65 million from the Disaster Relief Fund in the three years prior to Irene, leaving the fund virtually empty.